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It is not news that the research workplace has changed considerably over the past decade. As with many businesses, laboratories have come under pressure to generate better results with ever greater efficiency.

As a consultant and professor, I see it all of the time. Organizations are structured to fail. We make it almost impossible for some people to succeed. One simple example (which we can detail in another article) is mixing short term and long term oriented groups under one manager.

Steve Thomas, an investigator within the Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics department at GSK, talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, PhD, about his experiences implementing a database ofmetabolic knowledge that helps the company store, share, and search data around the globe. The process involved analyzing internal needs, evaluating several options, and finding the right informatics solution to give GSK scientists access to each other’s findings to prevent error, repetition, or inefficiency.

For David Hemmig, director of equipment sales at Matheson Tri-Gas (Basking Ridge, NJ), the key word in on-site gas generation is reliability. He explains that a major problem with gas generators that incorporate some sort of compressor is that eventually that component fails.

Life scientists started using microplates in the 1950s, with some of the first ones literally machined from solid blocks of plastic. You don’t need to wander around a molecular biology lab long today to see the progress in microplates, some now including thousands of wells.

According to a report from Persistence Market Research, Mass Spectrometry Technologies Market Assessment Report—Global Size, Share, Competitive Landscape, Future Prospects and Forecast from 2013-2017, mass spectrometry (MS) is one of the few instrumentation markets that has recovered fully from the last recession.

Despite being available for close to 30 years, laboratory information management systems (LIMSs) are about to undergo a metamorphosis characterized by greater utility, accessibility, and availability–at lower cost.

Imagine that you’re a field technician for a public water provider. Your company is committed to supplying clean, safe drinking water to millions of people, so it has implemented a sophisticated water sampling program to ensure water is free of contaminants.

Imaging encompasses a wide range of techniques that enable visualization of hidden features of samples, structures, or organisms. Imaging occurs at many scales, from medical magnetic resonance imaging of patients to individual atoms. This INSIGHTS on Imaging Systems focuses on the lower end of size domains in the typical operating range of—but not limited to—microscopy.

In addition to the products introduced at Pittcon 2014 we’ve already profiled in our Technology News section, there were plenty of other exciting developments to share from the press conferences we attended in Chicago in March.

This month, we highlight companies who will be exhibiting at the 62nd ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics (ASMS 2014), which will take place June 15-19, 2014 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland. This dynamic scientific conference features a variety of sessions and short courses and will close with an event at the National Aquarium. Please note that the products shown here may not be at the show, but their manufacturers will be.

Pipettes can be found in almost every laboratory and, if you’re looking to buy one, there are many options— manual or electronic, single or multi-channel. Luckily, a few main considerations can help in deciding whether or not to buy the latest pipette technology.

Problem: Assays using immortalized cell lines and plastic labware have been used for decades as an in-vitro mimic of how a putative drug may work in the human body. The last decade has seen attempts to improve the physiological relevance of these assays by the incorporation of human primary cells that better reflect human biology both from a drug efficacy and toxicity perspective. At issue with the use of primary cells is the relative difficulty in tissue culturing and maintenance for long-term studies relative to immortalized cell lines.

Filters vs. Monochromators - When using a microplate reader, these are the two options to filter light into monochromatic wavelengths. Filters offered higher performance because of greater light transmission and wider bandwidths; monochromators offered greater flexibility, no new filters were needed for each new assay.

Antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) is an important target for antibody-derived biopharmaceuticals, allowing the controlled targeting and destruction of tumor, virus-infected or other diseased cells. Promega’s ADCC Reporter Bioassayoffers a convenient way of assessing ADCC using frozen, thaw-and-use effector and target cells, eliminating the need for cell culture maintenance.

Giving you the power of normal-phase LC, but with the ease of use of reversed-phase LC, convergence chromatography is a broad-based, complementary analytical platform that is taking its place as an essential separation technology for modern laboratory analysis.